HD6850 alternative or get another

[adrian7396]

6 months ago i bought a
Sapphire 11180-00-40R HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCIE Graphics Card
I have a lot of flickering on my HDTV, consensus seems send the card back.

Now i dont know wether to get another or go back to an Nvidia.
Opinions seem mixed some saying ATI hardware is more reliable and some saying that the Nvidia drivers are better, 6850 seems to use less power than the Nvidia cards but generate more heat.
Any opinions and experiences welcome.
Regards
Adrian.

 

[EndlessWaves]

6 months ago i bought a
Sapphire 11180-00-40R HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCIE Graphics Card
I have a lot of flickering on my HDTV, consensus seems send the card back.

Now i dont know wether to get another or go back to an Nvidia.
Opinions seem mixed some saying ATI hardware is more reliable and some saying that the Nvidia drivers are better, 6850 seems to use less power than the Nvidia cards but generate more heat.
Any opinions and experiences welcome.
Regards
Adrian.

The ATI driver thing was certainly true twelve years ago when they were and up and coming company trying to compete with the establish Geforce 2s, 3s and 4s but since then I think it's just been perpetuated by people repeating it every time they had a failure.

Card reliability is likely to be much the same outside specific models e.g. the figures here don't show any real difference between return rates for manufacturers who favour ATI cards and those who favour nVidia cards.

As for power consumption vs. heat output, that's can't be right. It's as simple as power in = heat out. The card doesn't store up energy, or emit some of it as light or get rid of it in any other way. A heat output can certainly be more concentrated on a certain spot but if a card is taking 150W watts from the power supply then it's putting out 150W watts of heat.